LAX97LA013 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather
From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA013
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-181
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N2501X
- Operator
- Plus One Flyers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Unknown
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, transmission
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, performed
- Pilot in command › Impairment(alcohol)
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to information from the flying club that had operational control of the airplane, the airplane was taken without permission by a student pilot, who was a former member of the club. A police report was filed. Later, an investigation revealed that the student had taken the airplane after attending a party where he met his passenger. At about 0045 PDT, the student took off on a night flight. After about 2.7 hours of flight time, the airplane collided with high tension power lines, which were strung diagonally across a major city freeway. The accident site was 1.5 miles from the departure airport, and the power lines were about 75 feet above the pavement. The 0315 PDT weather at the airport was in part: 400 feet overcast, visibility 3 miles with fog, and wind calm. A toxicology test of the pilot's blood (drawn shortly after the accident) showed an alcohol level of 80 mg/dl (0.08%). Witnesses indicated that the pilot had been drinking beer at a party until almost midnight.
Probable cause
the student pilot's impairment of judgment and performance due to alcohol, his subsequent flight into adverse weather conditions, and his failure to maintain clearance from obstructions (power lines). Factors related to the accident were: darkness, low ceiling, and fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA013
- Event ID
- 20001208X06923
- Case number
- LAX97LA013
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 87ecbca79ac847cf7cdbe199d216ecb02da928d77c95f92e4355e78dd38545d9; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:24:17.149Z.